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The core question before voters in Tuesday's presidential election is:

"Which of the candidates will pursue policies more likely to produce broad prosperity after nearly four years of anemic growth and four decades of widening economic inequality?"

Despite the uneven economic results of his first term - attributable mostly to the intransigence of his opponents but also to his own leadership failures early in his term - the answer is Barrack Obama.

Obama's bailout of the auto companies, derided by his opponent and many others in the Republican Party in the dark economic times at the beginning of his term, saved a key component of American industry and preserved hundreds of thousands of jobs.

His stimulus legislation, undersized at birth due to dogged opposition from the GOP, and payroll tax cuts helped the nation weather the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression and put it on the path to recovery.

His unfairly reviled Affordable Care Act, though not perfect, was an admirable first step in securing health coverage for all Americans, slowing the growth of medical costs and ensuring that families who work hard and dutifully pay premiums year after year no longer run the risk of bankruptcy and ruin because of unforeseen major illness.

The Obama that has emerged from those legislative struggles is surely a less inspiring figure than the candidate of hope and change swept into office in 2008. The rising of the seas has not halted. The Republican lion has not lain down with the Democratic lamb.

But tempered by the partisanship he could not tame, Obama the president has proven to be a fighter for expanded civil rights, a champion for consumers against a sometimes predatory financial industry and a strong and steady leader when the nation is challenged by disasters both natural and man-made.

Obama has restored the honor of America by banning the torture sanctioned by his predecessor in the struggle against terrorists, even if his own undue political caution led him to abandon the promised closing of the prison at Guantanamo.

He has extricated the nation and its defenders from one ill-advised war in Iraq and is winding down another in Afghanistan that long ago achieved its original aims.

His sober and calculated approach to battling extremism has decimated al-Qaeda's leadership without undue risk to American lives or unsustainable commitments of American forces. He has navigated the upheavals of the Arab Spring as wisely as could be expected, preserving our national interests while encouraging factions whose aim is greater freedom in that part of the world.

The alternative to Obama is a candidate who has re-fashioned his positions again and again to fit the demands of the audience at hand and his own ambitions. All politicians do this to some extent, but the malleability of Mitt Romney is unprecedented in presidential politics.

It is extremely difficult to predict exactly which positions Romney would ultimately adopt in the White House. But judging by his allies, history and background it is most likely he would pursue tax and industrial policies skewed toward the interests of those at the top of the economic ladder, fundamentally alter the social programs that protect the weakest and neediest among us and cynically acquiesce to the most extreme members of his party on social issues.

As for foreign policy, Romney has tried to portray Obama as apologetic to our adversaries and inconstant to our allies. However, it was evident in the debate devoted to that topic that Romney would change little in the approach to Iran, China or Israel, except perhaps to talk more loudly.

In choosing Barrack Obama to sit in the Oval Office four years ago, many voters felt they were voting for a transformational figure, more a rock star than a practitioner of realpolitik. Obama willingly rode that emotion and enthusiasm to the White House, either knowing, or quickly learning, that governing the nation for four years would be harder than inspiring it for an election season.

At this juncture, we must evaluate the man and the job he has done in difficult times.

He has not lived up to the myth, but no politician could.

Viewed through that lens, Obama deserves a second term.

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